SUPPORT WORKERS SETTLE WITH CPS, BUT CTU STRIKE GOES ON
Chicago Public Schools announced Sunday that classes and after-school activities will be canceled again Monday after a frustrated Mayor Lori Lightfoot and district officials said negotiations with striking teachers remained stalled.
CPS CEO Janice Jackson joined Lightfoot in a rare Sunday night news conference in which the mayor blasted the Chicago Teachers Union over the impasse in contract talks.
“We are enormously disappointed that CTU cannot simply take yes for an answer,” Lightfoot said.
“As of today, we’ve put everything we could — responsibly — on the table in an attempt to get a deal done, but we have no deal to announce today,” Lightfoot said. “For that, I am terribly disappointed.”
The labor dispute that involved members of the Chicago Teachers Union has now prompted the cancellation of eight days of classes for CPS’ 300,000 students, surpassing the bitter 2012 strike to become the city’s longest schools walkout since 1987.
Lightfoot said the city put forth the “most generous offer in CPS history” to the CTU, which included raises for teachers and staff and addressed class sizes and support staffing by prioritizing schools with the greatest need.
“CTU have told us, told their membership and told the entire public that they wanted to get this contract to transform public education in Chicago, and this is exactly what our offer does,” Lightfoot said.
Jackson echoed Lightfoot’s frustrations with the union, saying that the city has met each of their demands and put it in writing as CTU requested.
“There’s no magic pill to fix this overnight, and there’s certainly no billion dollars in our state waiting to cover these expenses,” Jackson said.
Jackson claimed that CTU leadership’s remaining demands would require another $100 million in funding on top of the city’s current $500 million offer, “which the district can simply not afford.”
But at their own press conference later Sunday held outside Malcolm X College where bargaining has been taking place, CTU officials disputed the gap was so large.
CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said $38 million — .5% of CPS’ annual budget — separates both parties at the negotiating table.
When asked whether the city was misrepresenting the figures, the entire CTU bargaining team gave an emphatic “yes.”
She said that the city’s offer on class sizes would impact just onethird of the city.
“That’s an achievement, but that’s not enough,” Davis Gates said.
On staffing, the city said it has agreed to place a full-time social worker and nurse in every school, but Davis Gates said that most schools will be without librarians under the city’s offer.
But Davis Gates said the “most egregious gap” between the city and the union was on the issue of special education.
“So when I hear there’s a deal on the table and we can’t say yes, I have to ask: Do we say yes to injustice [or] inequity? Do we say yes to things that are half-done?” Davis Gates said.
“I need the parents in this city to know that everything we’re stuck on in this moment is about the quality of education in Chicago Public Schools,” she said.
Another stumbling point is the teachers union is seeking a threeyear deal, while the city has asked for five years. CTU President Jesse Sharkey made it clear that the union would only consider the longer contract if the city agreed to additional money to address teacher preparation time and class size, which he said wasn’t addressed in its latest offer.